According to Diodorus (v., 6), the Sicani, or aborigines
preceding the Sicilians, were compelled to fly to the western part of the
island, in the consequence of successive eruptions extending over many
years. The most ancient eruption of Mount Aetna on record is that mentioned
by Pindar and Schylus, as occurring under Hiero, in the second year of the
75th Olympiad. It is probable that Hesiod was aware of the devastating
eruptions of Aetna before the period of Greek immigration. There is,
however, some doubt regarding the work [Greek word] in the text of Hesiod, a
subject into whci I have entered at some length in another place.
(Humboldt, 'Examen Crit. de le Geogr.', t. i., p. 168.)
In the time of Nero, men were disposed to rank Aetna among the volcanic
mountains which were graduallybecoming extinct,* and subsequently Aelian**
even maintained that mariners could no longer see the sinking summit of the
mountain from so great a distance at sea.
[footnote] *Seaeca. 'Epist.', 79.
[footnote] ** Aelian, 'Var. Hist.', viii., 11.
Where these evidences -- these old scaffoldings of eruption, I might almost
say -- still exist, the volcano rises from a crater of elevation, while a
high rocky wall surrounds, like an amphitheater, the isolated conical mount,
and forms around it a kind of easing of highly elevated
p 228
strata.
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